Nature rarer uses Yellow
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: Will Mary tell Jed what she wished for?


"If I tell you, you will laugh."

"No, Mary, I promise, I solemnly vow I will not laugh—I won't chuckle or smile or in any way display the least bit of amusement. I can't even imagine what would make you think that, or what you might allude to," Jed replied.

He kept his mouth stern without the hint of the grin that lit his dark eyes so and Mary supposed she must say something, she might and not risk very much. He was a little fey tonight and whimsical and she had enjoyed listening to him talk a little about his boyhood conjectures about the watery denizens of the Chesapeake and the antics he had gotten into in pursuit of his most fervent wish to speak with his father's pointer Cicero "I was somehow convinced his name made him eloquent in Latin and so, applied myself diligently for two straight weeks to memorizing Caesar. He was unmoved by my efforts but he did listen quite patiently. I'm sure my accent was atrocious and the verb tenses! _Pax sit rebus_!" The last had seemed to be his most recent motto; Jed had been careful lately, since McBurney had arrived and Pinkerton, two sets of unfamiliar eyes scanning Mansion House. Neither as disposed to be as permissive as Summers or generous as Matron, as circumspect as Samuel Diggs, and Mary had been relieved that Jed was cognizant of this without her needing to say anything. He treated her with greater formality on the wards and met with her and McBurney weekly to discuss the inventories, mortality rates, the plan to contain camp fever should it try to establish a foothold. There had been only a few moments when they were incontrovertibly alone, when he could take her hand in his or risk letting his gaze reflect how much he cared, everything he wanted to tell her.

He'd found her straightening the crockery in her little kitchen, a remnant of Bullen's reign that was not painful, and both could hear Hale and Hastings holding forth in the ward, a performance that they enjoyed giving more than any audience, here sick men and patient nuns, could ever match in applause but what they lacked in compelling substance, they made up for in volume. Hale had just started his rounds, so Jed had decided there was time for a quarter-hour's frivol, he had declared that at the start, and she had nodded to prevent herself from anything less dignified. But now he was waiting for her to answer and it would be little enough to tell him, though she did not expect him to keep his promise. She would be embarrassed but it would be worth it to hear his voice purely happy, a laugh free of sarcasm or wry reflection or the darkness that a day of dying boys could bring.

"Well then, if you must know," she paused and he nodded so eagerly that she smiled, "I was very jealous of my sister Caroline, she was quite fair, and I wished my hair were the same color, not ordinary brown. So you see, you have been quite mistaken about me, I was a vain little girl, despite coming in with my stockings torn and my pockets full of burrs and brambles, to my mother's great dismay. I even prayed about it for a while until my mother heard me. She was very kind, it seems to me now, but I was shamed that she would know my faults, though they were ordinary as well."

Hale was booming about hemorrhage or cautery or Mexico, it was hard to make out because he was so loud and because Jed had stepped closer after she spoke. And because he had reached out one tentative hand to touch her hair where it was sleek against her head, before the blue silk snood, a gift from Caroline, netted her braids.

"I can't think why you would think yourself ordinary, Mary. Or how you could ever think this," he stroked her hair, brushed back one recalcitrant curl, "was anything other than lovely."

She held her breath. His mood had shifted like quicksilver, his volatility one aspect that seemed not to change very much with the battles or the deaths; she'd wondered afterwards if he had relapsed to the needle, but decided there was no other sign and that it was only his temperament. Hastings had interrupted Hale and the boys were subject to another strident oration about the Crimea but in the kitchen, there was a hushed quiet that was resonant as a bell.

"Everyone favors golden hair, it's the ideal," she said, striving to return to the impersonal, the general, to ignore his hand still touching her so very lightly. She wanted so much to turn her cheek into his palm, set a soft kiss at its center, and to see his eyes when she did. How tender his gaze could be and how patient, how warmly curious, how open and yearning and deliberate!

"Not everyone, Mary," Jed replied and she found she could say nothing else. He had kept his promise and neither of them was laughing. It seemed a long time before his hand fell away, before he could think of anything besides her dark beauty, before Anne Hastings's peculiar nostalgia ran dry.


End file.
